This was our first cruise and we boarded on 2nd August. We had 2 cabins with adjoining balconies at the aft of the boat, just below the Aloha cafe. We had read the reviews and were pretty well prepared as regards expectations. Embarkation was slower than I expected and the young man that checked us in was certainly not interested in doing what he was doing. We got there around 12 noon and we were on the 10th deck. We went to make reservations for the following nights dinner as we planned to eat at the main dining room that night. We then went to have lunch and explore the public areas. When we were finished lunch we heard an announcement to say that our deck rooms were ready and our luggage followed a while later, just left at the door.

I had read about the cleanliness of the cabins so had wipes at hand to clean out the drawers and counter tops. The carpet was not entirely clean either but I have to admit there is little room to vacuum around the bed. One of our balconies had a piece of fruit stuck to a table and some other things scattered about and this was still there when we left. It is hard to keep the balconies pristine when we were below the Aloha cafe and things did fall down at times from there when the wind gets up but it did appear that there had been no attempt to clean our balconies before or during our stay.

The rooms were small but we expected this and having 2 large balconies, one of which was big enough for the four of us, was a good bonus. We thought the food and the service was fine and good in the speciality restaurants and also on the Skyline on the first night when Mr Lee served us. It was slow on the other nights. We ate at Skyline three times, portions were small but it was good quality and nicely presented. We ate at the Aloha cafe buffet each morning, which was very good for choice. The best meals we had were in the Lazy J's Steakhouse and the East meets west Chinese area. There was a really on the ball young man in the Cadillac diner, who really seemed to know what he was doing and kept it all going but there were others that seemed less interested. Read more